In Virgin Land, Henry Nash Smith cites Hamlin
Garland's work, specifically "Under the Lion's Paw," as representative of
the increasingly realistic portrayal of rural existence that surfaced in literature about the West in the late 19th century. Garland's story
dramatizes the tension between struggling individual farmers and the speculators who
controlled the Western lands. "Under the Lion's Paw" provides a vehement counternarrative to
popular, romanticized notions of the "myth of the garden" which Smith analyzes
in Virgin Land.